sightreader

Brand new install. Went to scenario creation, went straight to the map utility, created and previewed the map, then tried to save the "scenario" into the QB directory as a QB map. After the save, much of the text was gone, especially the drop down lists when selecting a type of map to auto-generate and the "do you wish to save" box. Restarted CM and haven't had it happen since, even though I've been doing similar operations. Oh yeah, my machine is a Dell with an ATI 9700. Video driver is about 2 or 3 months old (the only driver recommended by the IL2 folks).

Yep, the disc is definitely fried. I can't even bring up the autoplay screen to begin the installation process. The disc whirrs, then it slows down, whirrs, slows down, etc. No luck on Q-Tips and Rubbing Alcohol, the scratch bit a pretty good chunk out of the data surface.

Thank you for your reply. The CD has visible scratches on the data surface, and the CD drive is making some very disturbing sounds trying to read it. The CD reading process is in a hard lock at 0 percent progress for over 5 minutes and cannot be aborted (I had to reboot the machine). I don't have ordering information from my friend yet: this is where I regret getting it as a gift because the person who bought it is not the same as the person trying to install it. When I get home tonight I'll try it again but wait longer.

I apologizes for the multiple postings. I got a 404 error page when I tried to post it, so I used the back button and tried again, not knowing the initial attempt succeeded. I tried to delete that other post, but it wouldn't let me.

My friend bought CMAK for me as a gift. CMAK was sent in a two day mailer that the post office balled up and jammed into my tiny mailbox. Since the CD had no real protection, it's scratched and will not install. What do I do? Hwei Yin 1212 Raintree Drive #A20 Fort Collins, CO 80526

My friend bought CMAK for me as a gift. CMAK was sent in a two day mailer that the post office balled up and jammed into my tiny mailbox. Since the CD had no real protection, it's scratched and will not install. What do I do? Hwei Yin 1212 Raintree Drive #A20 Fort Collins, CO 80526

From what I can tell, this delay in patches is typical for games where the vast majority of gameplay is real time dependent, including first person shooters. I don't know if this means that the community for all these real time games is as angry as the IL2 community. As for the paid add-ons, they used to release additional aircraft and fixes in free patches, but instead of being thankful, the forum would virulently attack the design team for not including their favorite plane or for downgrading the performance of a favorite plane. They would attempt to rebalance this back the other way, only to get bitter comments from those whose favorite plane was now getting beat by the changes. Designer Oleg Maddox was rumored to say that this sort of ill will was so frustrating that they decided that things would be a lot simpler if they just made people pay for the add-ons.

I'm back... work has been hectic. Anyway, here are the theories to date, with comments attached: 1. The turn based nature of a PBEM Combat Mission game (an hour to decide what to do with one minute) tends to reign in vindictive emotional reactions. Seems like a reasonable theory. 2. Forum members in IL2 are younger or less educated. I'm not sold on this one at all. The older, more knowledgeable posters get into urination contests over who knows more, and they can get quite adversarial. Consider the following quote: "Was the Erla canopy a vast improvement over earlier 109 canopy designs? Absolutely, and my hat's off to the designer. Was it the equivalent of a full bubble canopy? Not unless German pilots had X-Ray vision. Your refusal to grasp the simple rearward line-of-sight interference caused by the 80-odd centimeter wide rear spine of the 109 fuselage is laughable. That you would actually attempt to represent that configuration as superior to a 30cm wide head rest immediately behind the pilot is foolish. Are you about to claim now that the Erla canopy provided a 109 better rearward visibility than a FW190? Such a claim is ridiculous on its face. Do the geometry for yourself. " 3. Moderators in the CM forum are more thorough. A subthread cited a certain inflammatory member who was eventually banned from this forum. I would note how much trouble and grief was caused by this single member before he was banned. The problem is that moderators have to give such people the benefit of the doubt for several posts before they can ban them, before which they are able to cause substantial damage to the mood of the forum. In IL2, the mood has been so damaged that you'd darn near have to ban everyone. As a weird note, the IL2 forum seems to have calmed down lately, for no apparent reason. 4. The data in CM is less subjective (my own theory). The reason I say this is that many of the facts people in IL2 use to support their claims are based on pilot opinions of performance, which, of course, are quite contradictory. There just isn't hard data on things like energy bleed, turn radius, etc, etc. All the hard data only suggests performance, but does not ascertain it. You see a lot of posts like the following: "So he shot down an Bf-109 of which pilot did not see him. That gave Carson a serios insight on how Bf-109 behave in battle. Molders shot down 25 Spitfire from a total of 115 air kills early in the war (Molders died in an accident in '41). He said that Spitfire was pathetic as a fighter. Yes, he flew Bf-109. Molders opinion weights much more than that of Col. 'Nobody' Carson." [ October 24, 2003, 10:27 AM: Message edited by: sightreader ]

ooookkk... ummmm.... maybe it's time to just back away slowly and let the nice young men in clean white suits take care of this person. "Wet cleanup, aisle 5, wet cleanup, aisle 5..."

This may very well be true, but why wouldn't this generosity and love of history translate in the IL2 thread? I'm quite sure those guys love their planes just as much as you guys love your tanks. I still don't know what anyone thinks of the theory that the subjectivity of a simulation causes anger. When history says a plane is "manuverable", it's hard to know whether that means turn radius, turn rate, energy bleed, etc, etc. I don't think that problem is quite so intractable in tanks. Perhaps the anger in the IL2 forum is an expression of frustration over the fact that we will never know how those WWII really flew?

Reading your responses then going back to the IL2 forum, a possibility occurred to me. I was thinking that the objective data available about WWII tanks tells you more about what they could do than the objective data available about WWII aircraft. The objective data gathered about aircraft don't tell you very much about how it "feels" to fly. As an example, it's not enough to say how fast it is: you need to know how well it accelerates, how it changes at different altitudes, fuel consumption at different speeds, acceleration using emergency overboost, etc, etc, all sorts of stuff not gathered in standard tables nor obtainable from existing vintage models (without damaging them, of course). It seems that the vast majority of aircraft performance comes from subjective pilot reports, which are heavily influenced by the skill level of their opposition. This is not to say that there isn't subjective data in CMBB, but it seems like the amount of measureable, objective data makes this subjective influence less decisive in the play of the game. So, because the main object of discussion is intrinsically more subjective, could that explain why IL2 discussions tend to degenerate into finger pointing accusations rather that factual discourse? Could it be that the facts just don't help us very much with WWII aircraft?

Unfortunately, I don't think that explains it either, as the anger seems to be independent of age. Yes, the younger people make broader and less educated statements filled with offensive language, but the older folks tend to launch into page long diatribes. These essays may be filled with facts, but their anger is so great that they've lost control and start twisting facts out of control to feed the bitterness. Post after post, what angered them in one topic carries over to a new topic, where, at first opportunity, they launch into vicious invective to prove a point lost elsewhere.

Except that the IL2 forum (for example) is also moderated by some increasingly grey haired people who are starting to hate their job. Thread after thread gets locked as few threads go beyond 5 posts before they degenerate into angry, nationalistic invective.

Every other forum has been taken over by nasty, vicious invective. I find it hard not to get angry reading the IL2 forum, for example: no matter what someone posts, the discussion gets turned into an exchange of vehement nationalistic accusations (they deliberately sabotaged the performance of my country's stuff, or you're biased, or how would you know, you weren't there, etc, etc). This is not just in IL2, but pretty much everywhere on the internet: a complete breakdown of civility, immediate and virulent accusations with the harshest language people can muster. Everywhere, that is, except for here. Why are people on this forum (relatively) immune to this disease?

Restrict start zone the center, not entire back edge. You can also turn a square map diagonally and start in opposite corners. Make sure starting spots don't have dominating terrain. Use the zone editor and import a map rather than letting QB generate a map. Big tanks will have to spread out to protect their flank, but faster tanks will beat them there.

Except that I was having to put moves in for 2 turns in advance: by the time they get around their 90 second delay, someone has spoiled the whole affair. I wasn't quite ready for that: I'll have to make a plan that doesn't require such reactivity next time...

A 300 point QB: I thought I had it made when they gave me *six* T-26s in early '42. Starting from the corner of the diamond shaped map, I spread out to get side shots, but people couldn't see my hand signals. Learned there was a brutal penalty of 10 seconds per waypoint, preventing all my favorite hook-like flanking moves. Learned the T-26 is slower than just about EVERY German tank. The commander died right off the bat, caught in the open frantically trying to wave everyone down. Got every single one of my tanks creamed by a PzIII and a PzIV with only a few ricochets to show for it. I love this game. Where else can you get such a dose of reality?

Thank you, thank you, bless you, bless you. For our little 300 pt armor QBs, the long narrow maps lead to edge camping. I created a bevy of square diagonal maps (start in opposite corners) and it's just been a blast! Basically, with such maps, you feel like the world is as big as you need it...

For armored fights, the long rectangular maps generated in QBs are a pain. Is there any way to alter the default shape to something more square? Thanks!

It appears that the chance of HUNT moves changing to FAST moves increases if SLOPE terrain has to be navigated.

I had a unit that refused to move: each turn the same 20 second delay was shown for the same move, but turn after turn passed and it never actually took action on the move. The unit was a t34/76 at the crest of a large hill. It was the last unit I had: I do not believe it was the commanding tank, nor do I recall if the commander himself was still around as a bailed out crew. There was an enemy tank behind the opposite hill that may have popped out occasionally during the wait. There also may have been some bailed out enemy crews in close proximity, but I am not sure. The move was a reversal/retreat off the crest of the hill, followed by a series of FAST manuvers (to manuver into a flanking position on that enemy tank). I do not believe any of those moves traversed SLOPE terrain, but there was slope terrain on other parts of that hill. I finally gave up on the move and instead moved FORWARD into the valley between me and the opposing tank. This move was performed properly after the command delay.

Well, once your tanks have pummeled a bunch of enemy guns or tanks, MOVE TO CONTACT pretty much becomes a useless gesture, since all the little bailed out crews scare the tank into standing still. I don't know if it's a wise idea to have it classify threats before holding up or not: you know how people like to use those little banzai crew members... Speaking of banzai crew members, I like the new fatigue and morale model that severely limits how much charging around these little annoyances can do.

Tanks in CMBB have no mercy. After knocking out another tank, they'll keep plowing shells into it, knocking it out over and over again (at least according to the detailed damage). Of course, this sort of obsessive-compulsive behavior can be dangerous if someone is sneaking up behind you. By the way, I *love* the new, grittier, sort of pixellated look to the game. Looks a LOT less like a toy, although the graphics take quite a bit longer to load.

I'm still gathering data on this on, as I haven't been able to reproduce it on a consistent basis. I do seem to recall it happening occasionally in CMBO as well. My favorite tank trick is to zip up to the slope of a hill in FAST, put it in HUNT and peek over the top, then put it in REVERSE and tuck myself back down. In two different CMBB games, I've had this cocktail of different moves all turned into FAST. The only thing they've had in common was that the hills were quite steep. In a STUG IIIe, the AI had to replan my move into a complex dance because it had to work around some steep slopes. It appears that the change to HUNT was lost in the process, which was understandable because the new path didn't look much like the old path. I don't remember precisely, but I think it did remember to keep the REVERSE at the end, so I was perfectly happy with this. The next case was more disturbing. A STUGIII was traveling half way across the map at which point this little dance was tagged onto the end of the move. ALL the moves were converted to FAST, and I did NOT see any change in waypoints to avoid slopes. Nevertheless, the hill was pretty steep, althought it may not have been steep enough to have "slopes" in it. The STUGIII that was driving in tandem and doing the same thing did not suffer any difficulty; I had to replan the move and pause the other STUGIII so they would arrive at the same time. I do recall this happening from time to time in CMBO. Usually, when inspecting my moves, I notice everything has been changed to FAST before the tank has actually gotten there and I can change it back in time. However, I wonder if it might be behind some of the mysterious deaths I've occasionally had where tanks would turn their butts to the enemy before backing down, thus getting killed (a REVERSE order turned into a FAST order?) I'll be happy to send you my system specs if requested, but I'm not sure which aspects of the specs you need. Perhaps this problem is independent of the system type?

Hmm.... I guess it boils down to what's more important: detail or proportion? I think I'd go in favor of proportion over detail, especially since most of the time you're looking at the guys from pretty far away...